


Now Comes the Night

by Callie



Series: Now Comes the Night [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie/pseuds/Callie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carentan (3.18) AU.  263 days, and 27 more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Comes the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is for technosagery's "Magnus and Will almost get caught" challenge. "Almost get caught" was left up to the writers to define. Thanks to Cerie and Kageygirl for handholding and read-throughs!

_Day 217_

"Magnus, you are going to stop to eat, right?"

She makes a noncommittal noise and Will rolls his eyes. Magnus sits behind a pile of wires and circuits and a smaller pile of his and Josie's failed attempts at smelting the right kind of metal, working on the device. He thinks she can't see the expression behind all that junk, but then she huffs.

"I saw that."

"Good," he says, moving around the table. "Because today, at least, you really do have to stop and eat. It's Christmas."

"Christmas Eve," Magnus corrects. She ignores the fact that he sits on the edge of the table as she patiently twists tiny strands of wire into a larger strand. Will has no real idea what she does with this thing; his involvement is mostly limited to getting her the things she needs, holding things when she needs an extra pair of hands, and letting her yell at him when she's frustrated. This happens a lot, but Will's learned not to mind. It's not like he hasn't snapped at her a few good times during their little vacation here.

"Right," he says. "Christmas Eve. Which in France, apparently, means a big midnight feast. Anna's been cooking for days."

Magnus _mm-hmm_ s and continues manipulating bits of wire so small they make Will's eyes cross. He wonders if she'll acknowledge him, so he waits.

And waits.

"It's like, eleven-thirty," he points out, a few minutes later. Normally he'd wait her out, but Anna really has been cooking for days. They don't really do celebrations in Carentan anymore, not this close to the dark time when every bit of food and energy is squirreled away for the three years of night, but Christmas is the exception. Will thinks it's kind of fitting even if he isn't exactly religious.

"I know," Magnus says. "Just let me finish--"

"Got a present for you."

Magnus finally looks up and smiles. It brings out the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that Will only sees with that particular soft smile. He likes it. "A present? Really?"

"Yeah," he says. "But it's not anything huge." He pulls the fabric-wrapped package from inside his coat. Nobody in Carentan wasted their few precious sheets of paper for something like wrapping a present, but Anna had let him borrow a piece of red and white fabric and an old hair ribbon of her granddaughter's that was just the right size. It looks almost festive.

Magnus unwraps the gift, a soft blue sweater, and her smile softens even more. "It's new," she says in wonder. In another time and place that might be a weird thing to say about a gift, but in Carentan, _new_ things are about as rare as new people. "Where on earth--?"

Will grins, pleased. "I helped some people on the other side of town with a leaky roof a while back," he explains. He didn't think he'd been that much use, but they had. "They have sheep, and the wife spins and knits... she insisted on doing something to say thanks, so I had her make it for you." He'd requested blue, because he thought it would match her eyes--and it does, but he doesn't say so, because it seems corny or something.

"Thank you, Will. It's lovely." Her eyes look a little misty, then, and Will fiddles with wires on the tabletop. "I'll wear it to dinner."

"Aha! So you _will_ stop and eat," Will says, and resists saying _gotcha_.

Her eyes turn from misty to merry and she smiles. "Yes, I will."

It's a good thing he's talked Magnus into dinner, because Anna has gone all out. It's a family dinner, and Will and Magnus are apparently family as much as Ravi and Anna's now-grown children are. Ravi sits at one end of the big table with a granddaughter who keeps trying to climb into his lap and pull his graying hair, and Will has a hard time remembering the young, enthusiastic doctor who stopped his heart and brought him back again so he could talk to the avatar of a giant sea spider in the spirit world.

The food is amazing. Food in Carentan is never _bad_ \--it's all fresh and local, out of necessity, and there's no shortage yet--but it's usually a lot simpler and less abundant than what Anna's prepared tonight. Will eats his fill and when Anna piles more on his plate, he doesn't argue with her. It's Christmas, after all. A Christmas in the light times. Next Christmas will be the first of three dark ones, and Will doubts it'll be this festive even in candlelight.

He hopes like hell they're out of there by then.

After dinner, the grandchildren are sent off to bed. They don't argue that it's too light out to go to sleep, and Will realizes that the youngest ones don't even know what it's like for night to fall at all. They've always known daylight. It gives him a chill.

There are drinks for the adults. Not much, because they can't devote much of their food production to alcohol, but there is a little and it's Christmas so everyone indulges. It's strong enough that it doesn't matter that it's the one thing about the meal that's not that good. Will sips at his drink and secretly wishes for a Guinness. Magnus sits beside him on the couch in her new blue sweater with her hair pinned up off her neck in a fancy little knot. He watches her fingers curl around her glass and wonders how her hands stay so neat after seven months of living here. Maybe it was a side effect of winning the Source Blood Genetic Lottery: _order your unlimited supply of life now, and we'll throw in perfect hair and nails for free! limited time offer! call this number now!_

He doesn't know why he's thinking that about her like that--she's his boss and his best friend and that's just not right--and he tips his head back against the couch, closing his eyes to clear his head.

Later it's quiet, and Magnus nudges him awake. "You should go to bed," she says. "Everyone's gone upstairs."

"Ugh," Will grunts as he sits up. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, and now he feels like a lump. Too much good food and too much...whatever that drink was. He's unsteady on his feet when he gets up and so is Magnus, and they lean on each other a little as they tiptoe through the halls. Neither of them want to wake the grandchildren.

Magnus stops unexpectedly and Will stumbles, stepping on her foot. "Ow," she says, and pokes him in the arm. Hard.

"Why're we stopping?"

"Look." She points up and Will sees a dusty piece of plastic mistletoe hanging from the light fixture. There have been a few hanging around in the last few weeks--Josie caught him under one two days ago, and they'd shared a friendly kiss (thankfully no more talk of babies), and Anna had pecked him on the cheek this morning while Ravi pretended to be outraged--but he'd mostly managed to avoid it.

Until now.

Magnus has a funny look on her face, kind of like when he'd given her the sweater, and he clears his throat. He's not sure if being here is a good idea, and yet... his feet aren't really inclined to move.

"It's been a long time since I've had a kiss under the mistletoe," she says.

"Kate kissed you last year at Christmas dinner," Will reminds her. They'd passed around a few dutiful pecks over presents and dessert, except for Biggie, who settled for slapping them all a little less forcefully.

"So did you," she says. "But I mean a proper kiss."

"Oh," he says. His brain is a little slow and it's only when Magnus looks somewhat offended that it catches up with him.

"Nevermind," she says. She sounds hurt and Will feels like an ass.

"Magnus." He catches her arm and she doesn't pull away, but she doesn't turn around, either.

"The last time I had a proper kiss under the mistletoe it was James," she says, and her voice is thick. Will's brain is still about two beats behind and he doesn't realize she means _Watson_ until she's talking again. "I was just feeling a bit nostalgic. That's all."

But it isn't all, not really. Will feels helpless. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

It isn't fine, and Will knows it. "C'mere," he says, and folds her into a hug. She comes willingly; her arms go around his waist and her breath is warm against his neck. This surprises him. Magnus doesn't hold herself apart from him like she used to, not since they came here. She pats him on the back when he's down and sits close enough when they're working sometimes that their arms bump, and once she let him rub her neck when she was stressed, but despite their closeness there is always a little bit of distance. Just a little bit of distance that reminds him that Magnus is a person that doesn't let anyone too close anymore.

Right now, though, she's very close.

"I miss them," she says, and Will feels the loneliness in her words, the heavy aching weight of it, very keenly. He wants Kate to tease him and Biggie to knock him in the head and Henry to go for a beer with him. He wants to get up for the two am feedings and the Nubbin enclosure maintenance and the endless piles of paperwork. He even wants Tesla to call him Dr. Expendable and tell him to fetch more wine if it means they're at home, the only home he has really ever had.

And he knows Magnus misses everyone he does and then many, many more. She's said goodbye to more people than Will has ever met in his whole life and he knows that no matter how hard he tries, he will never really understand what it means to be Helen Magnus.

"I know," Will says. He rubs her back lightly; she tenses at that, and he almost stops, but then she relaxes, so he doesn't. She tightens her arms around him and leans on his shoulder and Will keeps up the slow rhythm of his fingers. It seems to be soothing her, and Will finds it's helping him, too.

Magnus straightens after a little while. She steps back a bit but doesn't let go of him. She just looks at him, and he feels like maybe it's the first time he's really _seen_ her. He came close to seeing that, once; she sat across from him on the sub with her mug of tea and her blanket and let the life ease back into her, the first time her guard had been down enough for him to really _get_ her. This time was different.

He feels like this time, maybe she saw him a little, too.

Kissing her is an impulse. It surprises him, and he thinks about stepping back to apologize, but she kisses him back and that surprises him even more. It's a hesitant kiss at first, kind of like dipping a toe in the water to see if it's cold before you jump right in; and then Will thinks less and feels more and the hesitance falls away a little bit at a time on both sides.

"Will," she says after a minute. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are wet and her hair is slipping out of the little knot. Will can't read her expression because it isn't one he's used to seeing and it throws him a little. He waits for her to say more, but she doesn't, and he worries that maybe this is a mistake; but then she takes his hand and squeezes a little and as he follows her down the hall, he stops worrying.

Mostly.

It's clear, when Will sees her bed, that she hasn't been sleeping in it very much, but he decides to skip the lecture about not taking care of herself because Magnus is kissing him again and he can't think about anything else. When he slides his hands under her sweater and his fingers move over the soft warmth of her back, she presses against him and makes a sound that he really, really wants to hear again. It's a good sound. It's a sound that makes him forget how achingly lonely she sounded in the hall under the mistletoe and he wants her not to _be_ lonely.

Magnus isn't shy about what she needs, not now; it's like since she's tested him and he hasn't bolted she's decided to let him in, but the walls don't come down easily and Will realizes they've been there a long, long time. For what feels like forever, they're just laying on her bed, kissing. Will likes kissing, but to him it's always been a prelude to something else. A means to an end. The way they're kissing now, fully clothed with every curve of her body fitted to his, is nothing like that, and he thinks he could just go on and on like this until the dark comes. These long, slow kisses pull up every bit of the complicated, endless things he feels for her, things he didn't even know he felt in places he didn't know existed, things that rip right through him and leave him unsteady and a little frantic.

 _Oh, shit,_ he thinks, overwhelmed, but what comes out is her name, mostly a whisper.

She shifts over him, touching his face. Her eyes are soft around the edges. "Shh," she says, nuzzling against his cheek, and he drinks her touch in greedily.

"I need--"

"I know," she says, before he can finish, and reaches for the hem of her soft blue sweater to pull it off. Her bra is faded and worn from so many washings, carefully mended. Magnus takes her time removing it and he takes his time touching her, learning her. She sinks against him a little, relaxing; the warmth between her thighs cradles his aching erection and he feels a little desperate.

"Magnus," Will warns. She doesn't ease up, and he groans, pushing her hips off him a little before he can't anymore. She isn't fighting him, but she makes an impatient sound and pushes at his clothes instead. Her fingernails scrape down his chest when she unbuttons his shirt and when they find his belt he nudges them away and does it himself. He's so worked up he can't risk her touching him right this second. She tugs at her pants and his jeans and she's straddling him again, sliding onto him with a sound that's both frustrated and satisfied and he grips her hips. It feels too good. He _can't._

"Please," Magnus says, and he aches all over because he hears all his wants echoed in her voice. She surges against him and he can't stop her. He stops trying. He slides his hand between them, searching and pressing, and she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, trying to keep quiet. It only partly works and she whimpers a little. His fingers slip, slick and clumsy, and she forgets to be quiet for a second, then they push each other to a climax with burning, blinding need. _I can't,_ he thinks, but he can and they do and it feels like it goes on forever.

They hold each other and slip into exhausted, sated sleep.

 

 _Day 218_

It's not daylight that wakes Will, because it's always daylight and he's used to it now. It's a sudden absence of warmth on the other side of the bed that wakes him. He opens his eyes and Magnus is standing by the bed. Her back is to him. She's only wearing her bra and panties, but she's turning her sweater rightside-out again so she can put it back on. Her hair is loose down her back, nearly to the band of her bra, and the sunlight catches the wild strands on the edges and turns them to burnished gold.

Will feels something heavy and warm in his chest. If he names it, it'll slip away, so he doesn't.

"Hey," he says, after she's pulled her sweater on.

She turns around and smiles a little. "Hello," she answers. Her hair has static now from the sweater, but she either doesn't know or doesn't care and Will's not going to point it out because it's kind of cute and that's not a word he ever associates with Magnus. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's okay. Merry Christmas."

" _Joyeux Noel_ ," she replies, and then she seems to suddenly realize she's standing there in a sweater and underwear and she reaches for her pants.

"You could come back to bed," he offers.

"I thought I'd get some more work in on the device," she says, and deftly twists her hair into a braid. The static-charged strands don't cooperate, but she doesn't notice. "Fifty-two days until the sun goes down. I don't want to waste them."

"Oh," he says. He's oddly disappointed, which is stupid, and he pushes the emotion away. "Need some help?"

"It's all right," Magnus says. "Why don't you get some more sleep?" She's all put together now, not looking anything like she just rolled out of bed five minutes ago, and Will wonders how she can do that without a brush or comb or even a damn mirror. It was like last night never happened.

"Sure," he says, and flops on his back, looking at the ceiling.

 

 _Day 225_

Will hasn't thought about what would happen to the villagers if the device worked. He's been operating under the benign assumption that when Carentan went back to normal time, they'd be right there, ready to see the rest of the world.

So when it finally dawns on him that every one of them--every single person in the village except for himself, Magnus, and Ravi--will just cease to exist, he feels sick. There isn't a choice. If they don't do it, the earth will be torn apart by the force of the time differential and they'll all die anyway, probably nastily, but Will isn't sure simply _not existing_ is any better.

Josie's reaction doesn't help. He tries to explain that they don't have a choice, that he doesn't _want_ to do this, but she's inconsolable and Will can't really blame her. There's nothing in his training or experience to equip him to help her deal with what's coming. There's no end-of-life counseling for these people. It's _end-of-existence_. Their grandchildren won't pass down stories and treasured quilts and knitted heirlooms long after they're gone, there won't be a family tree sketched out with faded ink on fragile paper to hand down to the next generation.

 _They won't exist._

He's told Josie a hundred stories, told Anna and Ravi's grandchildren a hundred stories, about baseball games and movies and tv and iPods, mountains and deserts and jungles, shopping malls and bookstores and zoos and air conditioning and sunsets that are beautiful, not terrifiying. He thinks about telling them those stories and he feels like a goddamn liar. It has never even _occurred to him_ that this would be the outcome. It's blindsided him, and it makes him sick, and it pisses him off because there's nothing he can do. Nothing.

Magnus hasn't sought him out since Christmas Eve. She hasn't come to bed with him or acknowledged in any way what happened that night, so Will doesn't either. He tries to pretend this is okay and it's worked, for the most part, but right now the charade is completely fucking inadequate for what he's feeling and he thinks if he doesn't talk to her he'll blow up.

It's late when he finds her in the lab, and she's bent over the device. He thinks she's stripping burned-out coils from their experiment so he says, "Can we talk?"

Magnus doesn't answer. He comes closer and realizes she doesn't answer because she's crying. It's something he's seen so few times that he remembers each one in vivid detail--Watson's death, Ashley's death, what she thought was the Big Guy's death. She's been crying for some time. Her face is red and puffy and her nose is running and her chest heaves silently, and she clearly wants to tell him to go away but she doesn't have the energy to form the words because this is the kind of crying that exhausts your soul. He's intruding on something incredibly private, but he can't make himself leave.

"Magnus," he says carefully, and thinks about kneeling by her chair to talk to her, but she stands so abruptly and so violently, turning on him so quickly that he steps back, stunned.

"Why didn't you see this coming?" she snaps. Her whole body is quivering with frustration, shivering with helpless rage. "You should have seen it, Will! They're all going to disappear, we're essentially _murdering_ this entire community of people and it never even crossed your mind that this might happen, did it?"

"What are you blaming me for?" he snaps right back to her, bristling that she's turned this on _him_ \--he's a shrink, what the hell does he know about time dilation fields? He didn't even know there was such a thing until they got here.

"Because if you're going to take over the Sanctuary network for me one day, you can't make the same stupid mistakes I do!"

Magnus sinks into her chair again and puts her face in her hands and Will's anger evaporates, leaving him deflated. It wasn't him she blamed, it was herself, and she lashed out at him because he was the only one she _could_ lash out at.

Will hesitates, then pulls a chair up near hers. He folds her in his arms, but she's tense and resists; he rubs her back and whispers in her ear and eventually she relaxes a little, just enough that he thinks this might be the right thing to do.

"Nobody could have guessed this would happen," he says lowly. "Not me, not you, not anyone else."

"I can't accept that."

"It's the truth."

She doesn't reply, but since she doesn't argue with him Will takes her silence for acceptance, or at least acknowledgement of his point. He keeps up the motion of his hands on her back for a little while. Eventually his hands get tired and he stops and just holds her instead.

"The whole town, Will," she says eventually. She's not crying anymore, or angry. She sounds a little defeated. "All of them."

"I know," he says, and it curdles his stomach. "But if we don't, they'll die anyway. We all will."

"I know."

"It doesn't make it easier."

"No."

Will sighs and squeezes her shoulders. "Come to bed," he says. "Just to sleep," he adds quickly, so she doesn't think there are expectations. He has none anyway, after Christmas Day, but right now he just wants her to sleep and he wants to make sure she sleeps.

She lets him hold her all night. She sleeps hard, though Will doesn't fall asleep for hours, and she's up in the morning before Will is so she can work in the lab again.

 

 _Day 254_

There's a routine, now. Magnus spends most of her time in the lab. Will helps her when she needs it and when she doesn't, he tries to help in town. He feels like a fraud but he does it anyway because unless and until they make progress with the device, they have to prepare for sundown. And if their stone letter message in the field isn't picked up, or if the team can't find any of the element from Worth's time node, they aren't getting anywhere with the device anyway. The metals they smelt together simply aren't working and now they're just wasting things, so Will stops experimenting. He's not so good at it without Josie's help, anyway, and he can't blame her one bit for stopping work on the project.

Magnus sleeps in his room most nights lately. They don't have sex, but Magnus tucks herself under his arm when she slides under his covers and he thinks maybe that's all either of them can handle right now and he isn't sure she wants more than that anyway. He's tense all the time now, and watchful. He starts waking up earlier and he thinks it's because two guys from the other side of town broke into the lab one day and started busting things up--Will and Ravi threw them out and made better locks for the doors--but after a while he realizes it's not that he's waking up earlier, it's that Magnus is sleeping later. It feels wrong, but he doesn't comment and he never wakes her. If she needs sleep, he'll do what he can to make sure she gets it.

She sleeps mostly naked. They both do, because it feels like a waste of clothes to use them for sleeping in when it meant they'd have to be washed even more often, worn out just a little more. It's funny how quickly he started thinking like a Carentan native, he thinks, but it's true. And he doesn't mind, because he craves the skin-to-skin contact with Magnus that the lack of pajamas allows.

He likes to think she craves it too. There's never hesitation when she slides in naked with him, tucking his arm around her body, pressing against him until they're spooned together. He never sleeps until he feels her breathing even out and her body relax. At some point along the way he's fallen so hard for her he doesn't remember what it's like _not_ to feel this way about her. This will probably cause even more problems between them than it already has, he thinks, but he can't change how he feels. That's just how it is.

This morning he wakes before her again, and he takes the time to watch her sleep. The covers have slipped off her shoulders at some point in the night, and the crack of sun coming through the tiny gap in the closed curtains casts a warm glow on her skin. He doesn't want to wake her, because she's obviously tired, but he's never seen anything more beautiful than her in his life and it only adds to the complicated jumble of things he feels for her.

Will kisses her shoulder, lets his mouth linger against her skin for a few seconds before pulling away. Magnus stirs and he wants to kick himself, because he didn't mean to wake her. She shifts onto her back and opens her eyes.

"Go back to sleep," he whispers.

"Perhaps," she allows. She doesn't close her eyes, but she doesn't get up either. This isn't how their morning routine goes, and Will's not sure how it's going to shake out.

"You okay?" he asks after a minute, when it's clear she isn't going back to sleep. "You've been sleeping a lot lately. Well, a lot for you," he amends, since her normal amount of sleep is anywhere from three hours to nothing.

"Just a bit tired," she says, giving him a smile that looks just that. It doesn't reassure him. "I'm fine."

"Okay. Just checking."

He waits, and she still doesn't jump out of bed. He waits for her to tell him he needn't hover, but she doesn't. He decides to chance sliding his arm across her stomach; she draws in a breath and he pulls back, but she catches his hand before he can pull away.

"Will--"

"Can I--?"

He doesn't finish that sentence, because she's pressed her mouth to his. It's soft and hesitant and he doesn't want to spook her, but she's eased herself on top of him and he _wants_ her. He doesn't really know where they stand, though, and he doesn't push it. Will keeps his hands light and their kisses light and she settles into it a little, sighing softly.

He thinks he's spooked her anyway though, because she makes an uncomfortable noise and suddenly pulls away, shifting off him. "Magnus?" he asks, but her eyes are wide and frantic, and she's off the bed and across the room and throwing up in the trashcan before he realizes what's happening. He kneels beside her and holds her hair back and somehow manages not to throw up himself, which is a miracle, considering.

When she's finished, he hands her a towel. "I'm sorry," she says, and he helps her back to the bed. She lays down and pulls the covers up and closes her eyes.

Something heavy settles in Will's stomach, mixing with his constant low-grade worry for her to create something new and unpleasant. "Talk to me," he says quietly.

Magnus seems to be waiting to be sure she won't vomit again before she opens her eyes and looks at him. "I'm fine, Will," she says, and he doesn't need to be a profiler to know she's lying to him.

"Come on, Magnus," he says, a little bitterly. "You're exhausted and puking, and you know, I'm just a shrink, but..." He can't finish. He just needs her to spell it out for him.

She sits up slowly, looking a little green around the edges, and hugs the sheet to her chest. "It's entirely possible," she says carefully, looking at her knees, "that our being intimate on Christmas Eve without prophylactics may have resulted in conception."

The way she says it is so formal and clinical that he almost wants to laugh, but he doesn't, because what she's telling him is that she's probably pregnant, and that would be a big enough bomb on its own even if they weren't where they are and this is absolutely the last thing he could possibly laugh about.

"Are you sure?" he asks. It wasn't like she could have gone to the corner store and picked up a pregnancy test.

"I haven't had a menstrual period since December," she says clinically, still looking at her knees.

"Magnus--"

She cuts him off, shaking her head a little. "Will, you don't need to say anything," she says softly. "Or do anything, or--anything."

Will wants to kick himself for being so careless. Just because they had been tipsy and lonely and exhausted was no excuse to take the chance, and they had, and now everything was infinitely more complicated.

"There's nothing to be done, anyway," she says, in the kind of voice she uses when she's outlining a professional quandary. "We must break the time bubble at all costs. Before the sun sets, if we can. This doesn't affect our plans."

 _It should!_ Will thinks, practically screams in his head, but he doesn't say it. He knows she's right. It's so hard for him to wrap his head around what she's saying that it doesn't quite seem real because they're standing on the edge of a massive reset of everything that's happened here.

Everything.

"Magnus." He finds her hand and pushes his fingers between hers. She squeezes, hard, but she doesn't look at him. "I'm sorry."

"So am I, Will," she says.

 

 _Day 256_

Will wonders if Magnus would have told him about the pregnancy if she hadn't been sick. He decides he's not going to ask because he doesn't really want to know the answer.

 

 _Day 261_

A Jeep crashes through the dome and Will recognizes it as the same generic kind of military-issue vehicle that surrounded the base camp. There's half a missile in the front seat--thankfully not the explosive half--and he guesses this is Kate's work.

 _Thank God for Kate_ , he thinks, and misses her like hell.

Magnus picks it apart and says she thinks the casing will work for shielding. It's not exactly the element they need but it's a hundred times better than anything else they have and they have to try. The sun hovers right over the treeline, casting long, gloomy shadows over the whole town. Ravi says it'll be about nine days of this scarce sunlight. Then it's three years of dark. No more solar panels and rationed battery usage means the lab will be useless and they won't get another shot.

They're out of time.

"How's it going?" he asks her.

She's making final adjustments to the device, fitting everything carefully. It has to be perfect because they won't get another chance. They're both on high alert, listening and watching for any sign of trouble. The people of Carentan have been volatile since the Jeep showed up. They know it brought something Magnus and Will can use and they don't want to let them use it. It feels a little like a mob and that terrifies Will, because he knows there's nothing worse than a large group of frightened people that fear--justifiably so--for their lives.

"As usual, slower than I'd like," Magnus says. "Hopefully, this new shielding will do the trick." She smiles a little, but it's a tired smile that doesn't reach her eyes.

Will knows it's not just stress making her tired.

 

 _Day 2_

Will wakes up before Magnus does. She was closer to the device than he was, so the effect hit her harder. That's what he thinks, anyway, not that he ever really understood how the damn thing worked. Declan and Kate have a million questions and he can't blame them, but he doesn't think he can explain right now and he really wants them to let Magnus sleep. It's not that he's not glad to see them, because he is. He's never been more glad to see _anybody_ in his life.

He just needs to process, first.

The bed on the other side of Magnus is empty. It was never occupied, because Ravi was dead by the time they were found. Will has never had anyone take a bullet for him and he's pretty sure that feeling in his stomach is survivor's guilt. He knows what he'd say to someone else, if they were him, but he can't say it to himself because somehow it doesn't fit. He could have made it unnecessary. He saw what Josie was about to do, but until she pulled the trigger he didn't think she would do it so he didn't move; Ravi saw her more clearly, and it cost him his life.

"We made it," he says when she wakes. Magnus looks disoriented for a moment. She looks around to get her bearings and sees the empty bed and looks at Will. "Ravi didn't." He tells her about the airstrike that was called off at the last minute and the few jumbled-up details he knows and she eases herself up to sitting, wincing a little. Even crosslegged in a hospital bed, she sits straight and holds herself carefully, her posture as elegant as it can be like this because she's Helen Magnus and that's what she does. It just reminds Will how incredibly strong she is.

"Now we need to get to work," she says. Her hands are folded on the blanket. "Something, or some _one_ , is behind what happened in Carentan. I feel it in my gut."

"You're not blaming yourself, are you?" Will asks.

"Until I know differently," she answers.

Will isn't surprised by that answer, because he knew she would blame herself. He feels like there's a gap between them, a space wider than the one between their hospital beds, and it aches. But there is business to take care of now.

Some nurses come in to check on them. It's eventually decided that they're fine and they can go. Will pulls the curtain between them so they can change. It feels strange to put on clothes that aren't worn thin with a hundred years' worth of washings.

Declan drives the rented car back to DeGaulle. Kate climbs in back with him and Magnus sits up front with Declan. Will lets Kate do most of the talking.

 

 _Day 6_

Things are kind of back to normal. Will has a ton of paperwork on his desk and he wonders how that happened because he was only really gone a few days. He slogs through the paperwork and goes to staff meetings and takes his turn on the two am feedings and he doesn't see Magnus much. They're all busy.

Abby calls. She's worried because she hasn't heard from him and he feels like a huge ass because he hasn't talked to her for months and then he remembers he wasn't really gone that long. He still feels like an ass. They meet for lunch and he tries to explain. Not everything--he doesn't talk to her about Magnus, because it feels wrong--and Abby realizes he's keeping something back because that's what she does.

It ends about like he expects which isn't bad but it isn't really good either.

Will still feels like an ass.

 

 _Day 14_

There's not much to do on the Carentan mystery right now and it's frustrating. But there are always a hundred other missions to keep them busy. Kate and Will go on a retrieval. It's a seven-hour drive to the town in Oregon they're looking for and Will feels weird driving because he hasn't in a while. Kate bitches about the drive until Will reminds her that the abnormal they're going after gets violent in the air even with sedation and it's easier this way.

"I get violent on boring car rides without sedation," she grumps, and slumps against the window.

They get there way ahead of schedule because they take turns driving and Kate treats speed limits as kind of a suggestion, not a rule. They aren't meeting their contact until morning, and Kate is twitchy from being cooped up in the van all day. She spies some kind of open-air market as they pass through town and whips the van into a parking spot Will didn't realize was there.

"Dude, these kind of places always have great leather gear," she informs him. 'Handmade, quality stuff."

Will's not really sure he wants to watch Kate shop, but he doesn't have anything better to do while they're killing time, so he follows along behind her. He draws the line at carrying her packages, though, and eventually wanders away while she haggles with a vendor over the price of a studded belt.

It's a market full of handmade things, he realizes. People take the stuff they've carved or sewed or knitted or painted and bring it to this market to sell, and there are people everywhere looking and buying and talking. He wanders around aimlessly for a while. Kate's still looking at belts and gloves and some things he can't identify (and doesn't want to) so he goes over to the food vendors and orders a cheeseburger and a Coke.

It's good, but it tastes like _too much_ , almost, after the food in Carentan, so he doesn't finish it.

He's bored and ready to go then, and he goes to find Kate, but there's a crowd and he's stuck standing in one place for a while. It's near a booth with knitted things, and he stands there looking at the goods while he waits for the crowd to thin. Funny hats kind of like the orange one Kate has, brightly colored scarves and piles of gloves and mittens, neat stacks of sweaters.

There's a blue sweater on top of the pile at the end of the table. It's not the same as the one he gave Magnus for Christmas in Carentan, but it's the same color, almost, and he feels stupidly nostalgic. It's just a damn sweater. He thinks of how she looked in that blue sweater on Christmas Eve with her hair pulled back in a little knot and the softness of her face without makeup and he thinks maybe he's losing it a little.

On impulse, he scoops it up and pays for it.

"You getting that for Abby?" Kate asks. She's appeared out of nowhere with a couple of bags in her hand and looks pleased. "It's nice."

"No," Will says, and Kate looks confused, but he doesn't elaborate.

 

 _Day 15_

Will and Kate get back to the Sanctuary with no incidents. They get the new arrival settled and then Will goes to the big closet behind the kitchen where the holiday decorations are. In the very back behind the lights and the big boxes of fragile crystal ornaments are a couple of battered tubes of wrapping paper. He snags one with cartoon snowmen on it even though it's not quite Halloween yet.

Maybe he's overstepping. Maybe she doesn't want to talk about this. Maybe it's just stupid. At this point Will doesn't care. He _needs_ to talk to her and if he has to use this for an excuse, he will.

There's a light on in Magnus's office, spilling a yellow glow through the crack at the bottom of the door. He knocks lightly, then pushes it open.

"Hey," he says.

She looks up and Will's heart stops for a second. "Hello," she says. "How was the mission?"

"Good," he says. "It was good. Long drive. I'll do a report tomorrow." He's holding the package behind him with one hand and the paper crinkles. Magnus tilts her head a little at the sound, curious. "I um..." He moves toward her desk and drops the package on it. "Got you a present."

Her eyes go a little soft. "It isn't Christmas," she says quietly, looking at it.

"I know," he says. "I just... I saw it and I thought of you and..."

Magnus pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and her breath catches. "Will," she says.

"Just open it." He doesn't want to beg, but he needs this opening to talk to her about something other than work. They talk about the fire elemental and the time bubble but they don't talk about what happened _in_ the bubble, ever. He needs to talk to her about what's happened but he doesn't know how and the longer it goes on the harder it gets.

She nods and starts to unwrap it. He's used too much tape, so it isn't easy, and he makes himself not fidget while he waits. When she's done she pushes the paper to the side of her desk and just looks at the sweater.

"I can't do this anymore, Magnus," he blurts, before she can shoot him down. She doesn't look up and he keeps talking, words coming out faster than his brain can organize them into something making sense. "We're doing this thing like nothing happened and I can't do it. I don't know if you--if you don't want to talk about it, or you don't need to talk about it, or if you think it was a mistake and we should just move on, okay, I understand, I just--I have to tell you that I'm sorry I wasn't more careful, and I'm sorry that I didn't know what to say or do, but I'm not sorry we were together."

She's looking down at her lap and Will has the awful feeling he's made things worse than they are already, so he stops talking. Will wants very badly to hug her, but he doesn't want to invade her space. She's wearing one of her black suits and she's perfectly put together, down to the silver clip in her hair, and everything about her body language broadcasts the wall she's put up. He waits a minute and she doesn't speak and he lets out a long, careful breath. "We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," he says quietly. "I just had to say I'm sorry for what happened."

"I'm sorry, too," she says, but she doesn't look up. "It's hard."

"I know," he says. She isn't looking at him, but at least she's talking, and he thinks maybe that's good. He hopes it is. He just wants them to be okay in the sense that they can be friends, they can work together, they can still be a team.

He wants _her_ to be okay.

There's a silence that needs words to fill it. He doesn't have any more, and he doesn't want to force hers. "I can go," he offers, uncertain.

She nods a little. "I just need a little time, Will," she says.

"It's okay to need that," he says. "Just don't let it be forever."

 

 _Day 18_

Will is working late when she comes to his office. He's decided he's going to catch up on the paperwork if it kills him--he's starting to think that paperwork is a sentient abnormal that breeds when left in unchaperoned piles for too long--and he's dragged the boxes over to the couch by the window with his laptop balanced on his knees. Magnus knocks on the doorframe. Will looks up and sees she's standing there wearing the blue sweater and he almost drops the laptop. He has to scramble, but he manages not to lose it.

"Am I interrupting?" she asks.

"Paperwork," he says, and tries a grin. "You can always interrupt that."

"All right."

He moves a stack of folders off the couch and she sits down there. "You okay?"

"Better," she says.

"Do you want to talk?" He tries to sound easy about this, but it's the closest he's been to her in a while and he really misses her.

Magnus tucks her hair behind her ears, a little nervous gesture that Will doesn't often see from her. "I'm not very good at talking," she says.

"Then we don't have to talk."

"All right." She looks at the piles of folders all over the coffee table and floor. "You're quite behind on your paperwork," she observes. It sounds almost, _almost_ like teasing.

"Kind of," he says.

"I could help you?" she offers, and Will blinks because paperwork is his job. Magnus doesn't wait for a reply, but she picks up a stack of folders and holds out her hand for a pen. Their fingers brush when he gives it to her.

They work in silence for a little while, but this silence doesn't need to be filled up with words. Magnus takes an armful of files to the cabinet behind his desk and when she comes back, she sits close enough that their elbows bump as they work.

"It wasn't your fault," she says after a little bit. She's working on a file and doesn't look up, and Will thinks maybe it's easier for her to talk when she's doing something else. "Neither of us were prudent in our behavior that night and I can't let you take sole responsibility--for our lack of concern over the unavailability of contraception," she adds quickly. "Not the act itself."

"Okay," he says, a little relieved but wondering if she's always this proper when talking about sex. It's a little endearing, but he values his life so he won't comment on it. "So the um... act itself..."

"I don't regret it." She closes the folder, the last one in her stack, folds her hands on top of it, and looks at him with a small, uncertain smile. "It's been quite some time since I've had any sort of relationship," she says. "I've had lovers, yes, but by necessity they've not occupied a central role in my life. My work is too consuming. And there are... other concerns."

She doesn't have to spell them out. Will has an idea, though he knows he will never really _get_ the things that have hurt her before.

"I'm used to sharing my bed with a lover," she says quietly. "I'm not used to sharing more than that."

"Do you _want_ more than that?" Will asks carefully. They've slipped into this conversation almost by accident. He doesn't want it to end before it's really started.

"I don't know." Her voice is honest, but calm, and Will is glad. "I really don't know, Will. But I would very much like to find out."

"Really?"

She's smiling a little more now--not a lot more, but it's a real smile now. "Yes, really," she says.

 

 _Day 21_

They're still busy and he doesn't see her much but it's a little different now. Magnus sits beside him on the couch for their midweek staff meeting, instead of one of the leather wing chairs, and Kate scowls because that's her spot but she doesn't say anything because it's Magnus's office and of course she can sit where she wants.

Later that evening he's doing paperwork again, and Magnus comes to his office again, and she sits on his couch under the pretense of helping him with it again. "Your penmanship is abysmal," she says, eyeing a note scrawled at the bottom of a report.

"I'm left-handed," Will points out. "I can't help it I have to hold my hand up off the page so it won't smear the ink while I'm writing."

"Excuses," she huffs, and continues to hand him files.

The next day there's a small box on his desk with two really nice pens with ink that doesn't smear no matter how much he drags his hand over what he's written.

 

 _Day 25_

"All caught up," Magnus announces as Will closes the last file in the stack they've been working on.

"Yeah," he says, and goes behind his desk to stick it in the file cabinet. "Until I get behind again, which is probably in, oh, twelve hours or something." Will likes these times with her when they're just hanging around in his office, working and talking and making the effort to be friends again, or more-than-friends, or whatever it is they are or will be. He's given up trying to define it. It's just there and he's okay with that.

"I never intended to have another child," she says suddenly.

Will's in the middle of closing the file cabinet and he nearly shuts it on his finger when she says that, but he manages not to. He doesn't know if he's supposed to turn around or say something or what--he's been waiting for this conversation but he suddenly realizes he's actually not prepared for it at all--so he opens the cabinet and rearranges some files that don't really need to be rearranged.

"I could, if I wanted to," she says quietly. "Physically, I mean. The source blood hasn't impaired my fertility in any way and I'm quite healthy. But after Ashley, I don't think I could bear it."

"No parent should ever have to watch their child die," he says. He's not really rearranging files now, he's poking at papers so he'll have something to do with his hands.

"It would always happen," she says. "I'm not sure the potential to know one's great-great-great-grandchildren is worth it." She hesitates, then asks, "Do you ever think about children, Will?"

"No," he says, and closes the cabinet, turning to look at her. "I don't. I mean, I don't know anything about... families. Real parents." Other kids had families, not him. They had been okay people, and maybe for another kid it would have been fine, but Will has too many memories of being packed off at three am because his latest foster parents just couldn't take another monster story. He's just found a family here, it feels like. He doesn't really want to raise one, at least not anytime soon.

"But if we'd been stuck in Carentan for good," he adds, "I might have been okay with that." He thinks about Ravi and Anna and their grandchildren, and the good life they had. It would have had its own set of problems, and it wouldn't have been as good as the life he has here--he likes this life much better--but it wouldn't have been the worst thing.

"Me, too," she says.

 

 _Day 27_

Will and Magnus are up late for an emergency videoconference with another head of house. It turns out not to be an emergency after all, and Will is relieved. When they're finished, Magnus turns off the monitors and Will scoops papers into a stack to file later.

"Glad that's over," he says.

"Another crisis averted," she says. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Will says, although he didn't really do much other than stand there with some papers and watch Magnus handle everything with calm efficiency. "It's late, so I'm just--"

"Will," she says, and slips her fingers into his hand.

It's the first real contact they've had since they got back and it startles him a little. "Yeah?"

"I thought, perhaps..."

"Yeah?"

When she kisses him, it feels like starting over, and it's the best feeling Will has had in a long, long time. It's a kiss that leaves him a little wobbly and Magnus a lot flushed and he could just keep on doing it for a while, but she squeezes his hand and leads him to her room and he goes willingly.

He's never been in her bedroom before--actually, before now, he wasn't entirely sure exactly where it was. There are candles in silver holders and she moves to light them, but he stops her. It's dark in her room, but he can see enough.

"It's different," he says. "From Carentan."

Magnus knows what he means, and steps into his arms, leaving the candles alone. She's wearing a soft dress that skims all her curves and he bunches the material in his hands, easing the hem up at the same time she's tugging at his buttons. Their hands bump and get in the way as they pull at each other's clothes and she laughs a little and he's glad because this, too, is different than Carentan.

The darkness wraps her skin in shadows and somehow it makes him want her more. Magnus tugs him down with her on the bed and he works his way down her body, kissing and touching in ways he didn't have the chance to do before. He likes the sounds she makes, the little sighs and shifts of breath. He wants to hear more of them, and when he presses her thighs apart to slide his tongue between them the sound she makes is its own reward.

Will draws it out as long as he can. He wants her to forget what she can and remember what she wants and mostly to feel _good_ for a little while. So he takes his time and when she arches up into him and comes she sounds utterly satisfied. He rests his head on her thigh and her fingers drift into his hair, stroking lazily while she catches her breath.

Then he moves back over her and kisses her. She wraps herself around him, holding him close. "I've taken appropriate precautions," she murmurs against his ear, "but there are condoms in the drawer if you'd prefer them."

Yes, he very much would. Her bed is huge and Will has to pull away from her over oceans of smooth cotton sheets to reach the table by the bed. He fumbles around a little because it's dark and her drawer is unfamiliar territory.

"Magnus, you really have a lot of stuff in here," he says, like he's pretending to be grumpy about it, and she laughs and slides across the bed to help him out. They get a little tangled up and there's more laughing and fumbling, and then Magnus strokes him a little as she slides the condom on and it really, _really_ feels good. She pulls him down on top of her and wraps her legs around him and he's lost in her--not in a desperate, frantic way, but in a way that feels so good and so right he doesn't want it to end. She gives him everything she has and he doesn't hold back and when he finishes, she holds him and makes him feel like she never wants to let go.

He never wants to leave her bed.

Magnus fits herself against him, spoon-fashion, and they doze a little. "I missed this," she murmurs sleepily, and pulls his arm around him a little more tightly.

"I missed _you_ ," he says. He gets a mouthful of her hair when he speaks, but he doesn't really care.

"I think we can make this work," she says.

"Me, too."

**Author's Note:**

> Note added 6-21-2011: Apparently there's some disagreement about whether or not Helen could actually get pregnant at this point in her life. I'm well aware that women have a finite number of eggs. I'm also aware that the technology to remove an embryo/fetus from the womb in a manner that would keep it viable, freeze it, and bring it to term 100 years later did not exist in Victorian times--and as far as I know, does not exist now. Since it's quite clear that Sanctuary plays fast and loose with biomedical science, I don't think it's within the realm of impossibility that this could happen, and I'm not really interested in debating it.


End file.
